What Was Lost
by BloodInkLilacQuill
Summary: Set after Genesis, Washington is dead and Taylor has to move on, Sky has to prove she is worth being forgiven. Wash can be saved but only if Taylor will listen. Please read, enjoy and review!


Washington heard the gun go off, she thought she could have caught a glimpse of the bullet too, right before it struck her. Everything went dark and Washington knew she was dead, she even looked forward to the end of the pain, but the pain continued, she grew colder and colder and she knew she needed to get to warmth soon but found she couldn't move, too close to death, she was sleepy to, something she didn't expect death to be when she was dead. The pain was near agonizing but it did not go away.

She felt like time was passing, a strange concept when your dead. The pain and the cold never went away but she found she kept losing herself, her consciousness kept disappearing or fading and coming back. "It's a strange thing, being a ghost..." She thought as she felt herself leaving again.

Tayler walked into Terra Nova, god it was good to be home. So much had been destroyed, so much needed to be repaired. Sky kept trying to make eye contact and talk to him but he wasn't ready for that just yet, the very sight of her made him physically nauseous.

His first line of action was nothing to do with her. After putting Sky on house arrest, and ordering her to be put on graveyard digging for a week, he went to the tree fort and checked the gates, fully intact but there was no power. He checked the hospitals and their equipment, the sixers had done something to all of the equipment because it was all offline and not working, it seemed the entire place had no power but that could be fixed. He also helped with the digging crew for a bit and generally everything else required when your home was invaded by mercenaries. It was past nightfall and he was in the hospital helping with inventory when someone finally approached him.

"We don't know what to do with her..." Shannon said hesitantly

"Who?" Taylor demanded, tiredly.

"Washington, sir"

"Well where is it then?" Taylor commanded, speaking of the corpse.

"Where she fell." Shannon let out a breath, "I would move her but I'd be alone, no one wants to touch her until you come."

"You mean they just left her there?"

"Where she fell." Shannon said nodding sadly.

Taylor rushed from the hospital all the way to where they had shot her and sure enough, exactly as she had fallen, her hands still tied behind her back and a dried puddle of blood streamed out from her wound across the pavement. By the amount of blood, still a little wet and sticky, he knew she had died quickly at least.

"Sir?" Sky said from behind him.

"Not now Sky." Tayler said angrily.

"Sir please-" She tried again but was cut off.

"Why arent you on house arrest like I ordered you to be?" He turned to her giving her that moment to back down.

"Sir if you just listen to me, you could prevent another disaster from happening." Sky said, two guards were pulling her back already, she was fighting just to be heard.

"I don't want to hear it, not now." Tayler said, he knew she had told Shannon a lot of her knowledge on the sixers and he knew they werent coming back anytime in the near future, that covered all he cared about that could take him away from Washington right now. He frowned as he realized he wasn't going to do much good crouching there looking at her so he ordered two of the men to put Washington on a stretcher and take her out to be buried, he wanted to go with them, and was planning to except...

"Sir this is important! It's about Washington." That got his attention, though not in the way she had hoped.

The slap was resounding, he knew he shouldn't have done it, she was just a child who didn't know what she was saying, well no. If he had learned anything these past few years is that being young doesn't make you a child.

He was breathing heavily as he stood over her. Barely containing himself he turned on his heel and walked away, but still she persisted, getting up off the ground she ran after him, slipping out of everyone's grasp, even Shannon who Taylor overheard behind say, 'that's enough.'

"Sir you have to listen to me." He turned around so fast she ran into him, and then backed away, fear and shock written all over her face, a look he had never wanted her to have when she looked at him, but whats done is done.

"We're done here." He said through gritted teeth, he didn't know how much more of her he could take, he might very well just banish her or take a gun to her he was so angry.

"If you just listened,... Her blood is on your hands."

He spoke through gritted teeth as close to her face as though they might collide "Washingtons blood on my hands? If you hadn't been spying, albeit for your mother, no one would have died, their blood is on your hands, not mine, yours." He knew she meant in the literal sense by the time he was finished talking and with disgust and no apology he wiped the substance off and onto his pants turned away from her swearing an oath to himself that if she persisted he would smack her again, this time draw blood. He saw at last the guards take hold of her, she had no coat to slip out of, as he saw now that's how she had evaded them, they took her roughly and began to take her away.

"Sir hear me out, if this doesn't make you forgive all of my past actions then nothing ever will, Ill accept it and leave forever."

He signaled them to stop and with a final thought towards Washingtons corpse, turned his back to it and faced Sky, willing her to have a good excuse.

She froze for a second, shocked he was now listening to her, then broke out of it. "Blue matter, I used blue matter on Washington after she was shot, she was still breathing so I used it."

Now it was his turn to freeze, blue matter was used very rarely in history, it froze the body in its current state, giving time to patch the person up when it was nearly impossible. The reason it was not used by everyone was because, it used up more 'blue energy' -the stuff that ran all the infirmary scanners dubbed 'monitors'- then all of Terra Nova currently had and more importantly, it trapped the person in the mental state they were in when they froze.

ie pain, if the subject was in great pain, they would be in pain until they were healed, unable to call for help or move, even to breath, the heart even stopped with blue matter, blue matter was just the right amount of oxygen in it to keep the body alive without such things as eating or the heart pumping.

"Who taught you how to use blue matter?" He nearly demanded.

"Luke told me about it that night at dinner, before the escape sir, he was talking about his first science project." Taylor remembered the project well, the cat had been a test project and although it hadn't survived trading heads with the dog... Luke considered the project a success.

"You used it after she was shot?" He confirmed, she nodded, he went up to the body and examined it, but to all eyes and purpose it looked like a dead body, he took out a knife and, after a moments hesitation, made a small cut on Washington's shoulder, at first appearance he was disappointed, no blue gel came out but after he applied presser the proof was there for all to see, a clear bluish liquid bubbled out, the moment he released his grip the goop went back in, amazing.

"Get Washington to the infirmary now, step on it!" He demanded, the men ran with the stretcher in the direction they had been ordered to.

Sky hesitantly stepped into his arms and looked up at him. "Did I do good?" He wasn't ready for this, he backed up and walked away.

He never saw Sky again, not up close anyway, though he did once make her out as he was visiting the graves, putting flowers onto her parents stones. She had known using the blue matter would null all the medical centers' technology, including her mothers medicine which couldn't stay as cool as it needed to be and so it had rotted. Without the ability or knowledge to make more her mother had died sometime into Washington's recovery, he hadn't even been informed until Sky had left.

Shannons' son followed her not long after but there is the rest of the story to tell.

Taylor stayed by Washington's side whenever he could be, he had to help the people so it was not nearly as much time as he would have liked but he respected that it was probably for the best, the odds of Washington recovering, fully was minimal. The longer the blue goop stayed in her system the longer Dr Shannon could take to correct the damage with the last remaining monitor in the camp, it was dying already and Taylor shuddered to think about what their lives would be like without those monitors.

It took weeks of waiting, but at last one of the doctors' assistants went up to him in his office. He raced down to the infirmary and saw, a stretcher with a body on it, the sheet covering her face but it was definitely female, his heart fell.

"Sir, you look like crap." Washington said, he turned to her, not the body being taken out, which he would later realize was Sky's mother which means Sky must have walked right by him then and he didn't even see her.

He stayed by Washington's side much longer then he had intended to, she was back fully and completely, no side effects yet found, no memory loss, she was the exact same.

As he finally made to leave Washington's voice rang out "Thank Sky for me." He turned away, the smile on his face dissipating as he considered Sky's role, a life for a life, she had definitely earned herself back into respect with him, it was forgiving her treachery that was so hard though, and he didn't know if he could ever do that, she had been like a daughter to him, and after Lucas...

To his eternal horror, he never had to forgive her, he ran into one of the guards, Shannon's daughters boyfriend if he remembered right, and he told Taylor he had just missed her, she had run away about three hours ago.

He tried to find her for days, weeks even but she knew where she was going and no one was either willing or able to follow her, sure he could track her but she was smart and knew his moves a little too well, it took him a week to discover why it was so hard, she was riding that dinosaur they had hatched, and by then she was far too gone for him to find, and still run Terra Nova. He had to finally give up and go back, there was much work to be done, still he was grateful to all Sky had done in her time with him, she had not spent much time sitting at her mothers side, she had worked hard and accomplished a lot, even putting Washingtons' rescue aside she had worked hard to get the place back up to its former glory, he was reminded she was even on graveyard digging which meant, she was probably the one to dig her mothers' grave which had been waiting right beside her fathers.

When Terra Nova was once more everything it had been and more, Shannons' son left, Shannon must have known his son was leaving because he wasn't too broken up about it. Washington was back on duty by then, she gave questioning glances but didn't ask what was going on. A few days later Sky's friends left to follow Sky. Taylor took this chance to follow Sky's friends, as they made pitiful attempts to hide their tracks and follow her, he found the sixers old hide out, where she had apparently been staying but much to his dismay as well as her friends, both Shannon Junior and Sky were gone. Wherever she stayed after that he didn't know, aside from the flowers at her parents graves at infrequent times, they both may have been dead for all he knew but he knew that they weren't with the sixers, and he ensured no rumors of that were put out either.

* * *

**I wanted to write a story where yes Washington gets saved but also a story where the main character is a little ambiguous. I hope I accomplished both...**


End file.
